Obama official: "Israel's Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is a chickenshit who doesn't have the guts to bomb Iran!"

Above and beyond the startling headlines about a senior Obama official calling Netanyahu "chickenshit", there is the far more important revelation by reporter Jeffrey Goldberg in his latest expose in the Atlantic magazine. A second senior Obama official agreed Netanyahu was a chickenshit not only in the Palestinian peace process, but also on the Iranian nuclear threat:

"The Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. It's too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately, he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger - it was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it's too late."

Shade yourself under the solar-panel canopy, recharge your devices, surf the Net, have a cool drink – courtesy of the sun and Israeli ingenuity.

Lots of cities have free Wi-Fi, but only one – so far – has an eTree.

This revolutionary ecological installation from Israel’s Sologic provides free wireless Internet, charging stations for electronic devices, nighttime lighting, and water coolers for humans and dogs – all powered by a “canopy” of solar panels.

Islamist terror struck within minutes in two separate world capitals, Ottawa and Jerusalem. It was a stark sign of the times that pits the militant Islam from over 1,400 years ago against everyone else: Christians, Jews, and other Muslims. Lone terrorists struck in Ottawa and Jerusalem, and Jihadist forces continue to threaten and massacre the remaining Muslim Kurds in the Syrian town of Kobani, while in Tehran it appears as if the ayatollahs have conned the U.S. into letting them keep their nuclear facilities for building A Bombs.

More than a million Jews were expelled from Arab and Muslim countries between 1948 and 1974, without asking for compensation or the right to return. Pierre Rehov's "Silent Exodus", is a tribute to their tragedy.

Kerry hints Israel is partly to blame for Islamic State!

Returning home from the Cairo meeting to rebuild Gaza, the U.S. Secretary of State has hinted that Israel is partly to blame for the rise of Islamic State:

"There isn't a leader I met with in the region who didn't raise with me spontaneously the need to try and get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause for recruitment and street anger and agitation. People need to understand the connection of that, and it has something to do with humiliation, and denial, and absence of dignity."

The satellite photos are shocking - the mysterious explosion flattened many buildings inside Iran's Parchin military test site. Now under international pressure to reach a nuclear accord with the 5P+1, the timing of the blast was atrocious for Tehran. It again raises the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon in the making. So far the Iranian negotiators have continued to stonewall with their diplomatic waltz of one step forward and two steps back. It appears that Ayatollah Khamenei and the fanatic Revolutionary Guards, who call the shots, are ready to make some marginal concessions in return for easing the crippling economic sanctions. However, they have dug in their heels on maintaining the potential to develop A-bombs in the future. Say, after the Iranian economy has recovered. So what went wrong in Parchin on October 7th that sent 'shock waves' not only through Tehran but also across the world?

Tuesday update:

IS forces. An estimated 12,000 Kurds are surrounded in the town, and Anne Barnard, the New York Times correspondent in Istanbul, has raised the of their slaughter by IS. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the only two foreign leaders who could possibly prevent it, continue to wring their hands and refuse to take effective action. Nobody expects anything decent from Erdogan, who hates the Kurds for campaigning against Turkey for their independence, but Obama?? Despite the US President's vow to 'degrade and ultimately destroy' Islamic State forces, he has launched a few feeble air strikes against what appears to be the main IS thrust on Kobani. American officials have said the air attacks had knocked out several IS armored trucks, destroyed an IS unit, and damaged a tank. Is this all the damage the most powerful air force in the world could inflict on IS forces in the Kobani area?

The Eilat-Eilot Off Grid Hub is developing solutions to bring electricity, clean water to world’s ‘bottom billion’

For Westerners, it’s hard to imagine life without electricity — but that’s the situation for more than a billion people, according to the UN. Besides making lives less convenient in far-flung rural areas and crowded urban slums in the developing countries of Africa and Asia — no electric lights or computers — it means an existence socially and economically worlds away from the 21st century in the West. Now an Israeli firm is working to close the gap by delivering technology.

Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu: How about taking your own advice? If an Iranian A-bomb is the greatest threat to Israel and the world, why do you repeatedly take your eye off the ball by building new housing units in a controversial area of Jerusalem? Granted the original decision was taken two years ago and has only now been approved by the Jerusalem municipality, but you could have blocked it. Or at the very least, announced that you oppose such a tendentious decision at a time you are rallying US and international support for maintaining the sanctions on Tehran.

Tuesday update:

Keep your eye on the Iranian ball! Don't win the war on ISIL and lose the war to a nuclear Iran! This was the most telling message in Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's address to the UN General Assembly in New York. Obviously Israel's leader is worried about reports the US and the rest of the 5P+1 may offer Tehran an easing of the nuclear sanctions, if the Iranians join the coalition against Islamic State. He did not pull any punches:

'The Islamic Republic (Iran) is now trying to bamboozle its way to an agreement that will remove the sanctions it still faces, and leave it with the capacity of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. This would effectively cement Iran's place as a threshold nuclear power. In the future, at a time of its choosing, Iran, the world's most dangerous state in the world's most dangerous region, would obtain the world's most dangerous weapons'.

It's now about leading from above!

Alas, leading from behind will not work for US President Barack Obama in the Middle East. American jets are bombing and Tomahawk cruise missiles are blasting Islamic State ground forces and oil refineries in northern Syria and Iraq. After Gen. Martin Dempsey forewarned Obama that the air strikes on IS had better be serious or else he might have to recommend ground forces, the President got the message. Adding insult to injury, two of his former defense secretaries, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, also castigated Obama for being too eager to withdraw US troops from Iraq, a move that has exacerbated the overall situation. With Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain and even Qatar joining Obama's invitation to follow his lead, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron has now told the UN General Assembly that he's on board, as is Holland. The meltdown in Iraq and the civil war in Syria have spawned the IS juggernaut in those two former states and forced Obama to jettison his soft power, and switch to a harder foreign policy. This is how the US President described it in his address to the current session of the UN General Assembly in New York:

'The only language understood by killers like this (IS) is the language of force'.

Is ISIL now perpetrating a massacre of Kurds in northern Syria? Yes, according to Kurdish leaders in both Syria and Iraq. In the past several days, ISIL tanks, artillery and motorized forces have been pounding Kurdish militia in the area near the town of Kobani, which is nearly surrounded except for an escape route north to the Turkish border. An estimated sixty Kurdish villages have been overrun - thirty-nine fell on September 19th alone. Thousands of frantic Kurdish women, girls and small children have been fleeing to the north. Many have reportedly been kidnapped along the way by ISIL. The Kurdish militia are trying to stem the ISIL onslaught, but are vastly out gunned by the Muslim fanatics. President Masoud Barzani, the senior Kurdish leader has issued an appeal to the world before it is too late:

'I call upon the international community to take every measure as soon as possible to save Kobani and the people of Syrian Kurdistan from the terrorists - they will not hesitate to commit crimes and atrocities, therefore, they must be hit wherever they are'.

The current chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has this policy - he calls them as he sees them. Apparently he has serious doubts about President Barack Obama's strategy for defeating ISIL in Iraq and Syria by air power. And that is why Gen. Martin Dempsey has told Congress:

'If there are threats to the US, then I, of course, would go back to the President and make a recommendation that may include the use of US military ground forces'.

Predictably, Obama hit the roof. If Dempsey had opened the door to the military need for an eventual deployment of American 'boots on the ground', Obama slammed it shut. Appearing before American troops twenty-four hours later in Tampa, Florida hours later, the President declared unequivocally:

'The American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission'.

In an effort to drum up support for his newfound ISIL strategy, Obama noted that Britain and France were already flying missions over Iraq, and that Canada and Australia were sending military advisors.

Researchers' night, a night of science for the general public, occurs once a year in the Fall, at the time of the Equinox.

A tradition that began in 2006, Researchers' Night is once again enthralling and enriching the minds of Israel's "regular folk," with research and innovation from every direction. Researchers' Night is an international event which takes place eatch year all over europe, in association with the Europian Union, this time being the eighth year in a row. At the same time every year, events and lectures are held all over the country in many different venues to share the love of science with everyone - often in the most nontraditional of venues.

The historical irony is striking, on the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, another U.S. President, Barack Obama, has been forced to declare total war on a new breed of Muslim maniacs. However, Obama is no George Bush, a ranting Republican hawk raring to take on al Qaeda. This time it was a dovish Democrat, who at the outset of his term, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign promises - the judges in Oslo had discerned correctly that Obama would take a new approach in the Middle East and conclude America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the reality of fanatical Islam, far more savage than even al Qaida, has upset Obama's 'best laid plans'.

Donating to Research through...Research!

Many have only recently become familiarized with Lou Gehrig's disease, also know as ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), with the recent popularity of "The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge," which has taken social media by storm, and succeeded in raising millions of dollars for research - specifically, a comprehensive study of the human genome to determine genetic factors in onset and progression of this degenerative disease. What you may not have heard, however, is that before there was the Ice Bucket Challenge to chill the spine, warm the heart, and open the wallet, Israeli biotech company, BrainStorm, has been tirelessly working in the background for years, developing a new and effective treatment for ALS (as well as other debilitating neurodegenerative diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson's disease) using adult stem cells, and the results will astound you!

Has Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al Sisi offered a tract of Sinai territory as part of a territorial solution for Gaza?

In Israel, the Galei Tzahal radio station has reported that al Sisi was willing to contribute 1,600 square kilometers of Sinai to expand Gaza five times its present size. The new territory, together with Gaza, would provide the Palestinians with a Palestinian state under control of the Palestinian Authority, which is headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. On August 6, 2005, the IsraCast website first reported on a land swap proposal for Sinai that was proposed by Prof. Yehoshua Ben Arieh. At that time, IsraCast sponsor, Avi Yaffe even raised the question at a private meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who expressed interest in the idea.

Foreign Policy vs. Domestic Politics

Why in Jerusalem, did Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu annex another 1,000 acres of West Bank land, if he knew that in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama would hit the roof? Indeed the annexation has thrown a monkey wrench into the already strained relations between the two allies after Obama, in effect, ordered Netanyahu to call a unilateral ceasefire, although Hamas was still launching rockets and mortars at Israel. The answer is that Netanyahu has been hauled over the coals in his own Likud party and the far Right for reigning in the IDF before it finished off the Hamas leadership and its forces, and therefore, he used the annexation to placate his Right wing supporters. But surely the national interest should trump domestic politics. On this score, Henry Kissinger's observation that 'Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics' does apply. However this generalization, like most others, is only partially correct.

Who really bears responsibility for the killing of some 2,100 Palestinians, in the fighting between Hamas and Israel that ended on August 26 (1,100 Palestinian civilians and 1,000 terrorists)? Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has actually blamed Hamas for starting the war by escalating the rocketing of the Jewish state and then rejecting numerous Egyptian ceasefire proposals that Israel accepted. Interviewed on Palestinian TV, Abbas vented his anger: 'It was possible for us to avoid all that, the 2,000 martyrs, 10,000 injured and 50,000 houses that were damaged or destroyed (by Israeli counter strikes)'. Abbas, who recently signed a unity government agreement with Hamas, also criticized Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal for starting the war without consulting him. And Abbas added that if Hamas ever did it again, they would go it alone. The Palestinian President played an influential role in persuading Hamas to accept the ceasefire after Israel refused to give in to Hamas demands.